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K Jadhav: In fog of facts – Nepal arrest, Army vs Nawaz

New Delhi-based diplomatic sources said the Government of India had served
Pakistan with 13 separate diplomatic missives seeking access to Jadhav
since March 25, 2016.

Kulbhushan Jadhav

Fears are mounting that Kulbhushan Jadhav, sentenced to death by a
Pakistani military court, could be facing a protracted legal battle to
avoid execution, highly placed official sources in Pakistan and India have
told The reportar. The death sentence was handed down at the end of a
rushed trial lasting just hours, without a civilian defence lawyer.

Treated as a serving Indian military officer on the basis of a confessional
statement made in custody, Islamabad-based sources said Jadhav can now move
an appellate military court, followed by Pakistan’s Supreme Court and the
President, though he has so far not been allowed access to legal
representation.

In the so-called confessional video, Jadhav states he will remain in
service of the Indian Navy until 2022. However, he also says he “served in
the Indian Navy till around 2001 December”.

“Frankly,” said a senior Islamabad-based lawyer, “he’s going to have a
tough time. His fate is going to lie in the hands of Generals and
politicians, not judges.”

The verdict on Jadhav, sources in Islamabad said, came after an alarm was
raised over the disappearance of a retired Pakistan Lt Colonel, Muhammad
Habib Zahir, from Lumbini, close to the India-Nepal border. Islamabad
suspects that Zahir, a former ISI officer, was probably lured by India’s
intelligence services. Zahir is suspected to have played a key role in
running terror networks, targeting states on the India-Nepal border.

Islamabad-based sources claimed that the civilian government of Prime
Minister Nawaz Sharif was not consulted prior to initiating the
eleventh-hour military trial, initiated with the approval of Pakistan Army
chief Qamar Javed Bajwa. Indian government sources said New Delhi was also
not intimated until Sunday evening.

On Monday, Khwaja Asif, Pakistan’s Defence Minister, said the judgment
should serve as “warning to those plotting against Pakistan”.

The judgment, which could set off a fresh rupture in India’s already
fragile relationship with Pakistan, comes even as Pakistan’s Supreme Court
is hearing litigation seeking action against Sharif for alleged holdings in
offshore entitles disclosed in the Panama Papers.

Few facts have emerged from the wilderness of mirrors surrounding Jadhav, a
Maharashtra-born Indian Navy engineer who ended up running a dhow business
out of Iran’s Chabahar, armed with passports identifying him as Hussein
Mubarak Patel.

In a videotaped confession released by Pakistan’s military in March 2016,
heavily edited with mid-sentence-cuts and containing several contradictory
statements, Jadhav said he worked for India’s external intelligence
service.

Sartaj Aziz, Prime Minister Sharif’s advisor on Foreign Affairs, had been
reported as telling the Senate in December 2016 that the country had been
unable to complete a dossier on the case, meant for international
circulation, because “the material, in our view, was insufficient”. A
Foreign Office spokesperson had also said a “dossier shall be completed
upon conclusion of the investigation”.

New Delhi-based diplomatic sources said the Government of India had served
Pakistan with 13 separate diplomatic missives seeking access to Jadhav
since March 25, 2016.

India and Pakistan are both signatories to Article 36 of the Vienna
Protocol on Consular Relations, 1963, which mandates that consular of any
country “shall have the right to visit a national of the[ir] sending State
who is in prison, custody or detention, to converse and correspond with him
and to arrange for his legal representation”.

“The Government has not been given the relevant paperwork on Jadhav’s trial
so far,” an official at the Ministry of External Affairs said, “but we are
exploring what legal avenues may be available. The Jadhav family may also
be entitled to move an appeal on his behalf.”

Tehran’s envoy to Islamabad, Mehdi Honardoost, had last year dismissed
Pakistan’s charges that Jadhav was a spy as “one hundred percent false”.
Gunter Mulack, Germany’s former ambassador to Islamabad, said he had
information that Jadhav had been kidnapped by the Taliban inside Iran
Chaman, and sold to Pakistan’s ISI.

“Though it is vitally important to protect Pakistan against terrorism,”
said Marvi Sirmed, a journalist and human rights activist, “there is no
reason to destroy human rights and due legal process to do so. In Jadhav’s
case, it was in Pakistan’s vital national interests to ensure consular
access and legal due process so that our case was heard and believed by the
international community”.

With his family refusing multiple requests to comment on the case, piecing
together the story of Jadhav’s life has proved near impossible. What is
clear is that in November 2003, Jadhav — then still an Indian Navy
engineer, on the verge of retiring after 14 years of service — illegally
obtained passport E6934766 in Pune, identifying him by the pseudonym Patel.

To some friends in Mumbai, who spoke to this newspaper, Jadhav claimed he
was setting up an independent business in Iran. To others, he claimed he
was beginning work with R&AW. In his confessional video, Jadhav says he
was recruited by R&AW in 2013, but adds that he established “a base” in
Iran’s Chabahar 10 years earlier.

Former R&AW officer Anand Arni denies Jadhav worked for the
organisation. “I was a part of the Pakistan desk of R&AW for 25 years”,
he says, “and I can state with authority that he was not connected with us.
Retired officers are never made assets, and we would certainly never send
anyone on a clandestine mission with an Indian passport”.

The address given to obtain his passport — the Martand Co-operative Housing
Society in the Sai Vishwa area of Pune suburb Bavdhan — was incomplete. The
records do not even state which apartment Jadhav may have occupied in the
three-building complex.

Vijay Deshmukh, secretary of the building society, said records show no
apartment was owned by anyone with the surnames Jadhav or Patel. None of
the residents recognised Jadhav from a photograph shown to them.

Electronic tags linked to the passport show there was an earlier passport
also issued to an individual called Hussein Mubarak Patel, possibly
carrying visa stamps that made it easy to obtain new ones.

Whatever the truth, Jadhav ended up in the Chabahar free trade zone inside
months, telling friends and family he was setting up a business to service
dhows and ships operating out of the port. Later, he purchased a dhow, the
Kaminda, though there are no records of its having docked in Mumbai.
Business digests obtained by this newspaper show he tendered for at least
one consignment of fertiliser to be shipped out of Iran.

In 2014, Jadhav obtained the passport he was eventually to be arrested with
in Pakistan, L9630722, issued in Thane, identifying him as a resident of
the Jasdanwala Complex of the old Mumbai-Pune road cutting through Navi
Mumbai. The flat, municipal records show, was owned by his mother Avanti
Jadhav.

Even though Pakistan claims Jadhav was aiding Baloch insurgent groups, it
is yet to release any details on specific individuals he is alleged to have
been in contact with, or acts of terrorism he facilitated.

New Delhi-based diplomatic sources said the Government of India had served Pakistan with 13 separate diplomatic missives seeking access to Jadhav since March 25, 2016.
K Jadhav: In fog of facts – Nepal arrest, Army vs Nawaz